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Friday, November 30, 2012

I first visited the historic Santa Fe Depot in San Bernardino on a grim, winter day in February 2009, heading to the Ontario Airport to fly back from that first, life-changing visit to Joshua Tree. All the doors to the good stuff were locked, and the museum was closed.

I was able to visit it again recently on another gloomy day, but with a few more rays of sun...

...after a new coat of paint had given it a bit of a facelift.

Plus, a historian was there to point out the old Harvey Girl dorms...

...and where the north shops used to be on the other side of the tracks, which are now still filled with freight trains...

...and the occasional commuter line and Amtrak, though the ticket booth has long-since closed.

The station is lovely, reflective of high class train travel of days of yore, with its original ceiling light fixtures...

...and closed Harvey House restaurant, which can be viewed through the slats of some window blinds.

They hope to reopen it one day soon.

The wall tiles and red Mexican floor tiles are original too...

...including in the lovely lounge outside the ladies' powder room.

The San Bernardino History & Railroad Museum at the Santa Fe Depot does conduct depot and museum tours on the first Wednesday of every month, and the museum is open most Saturdays. There's lots of stuff to look at in there, from precision-accurate clocks and watches to signals, bells and whistles, maps, wagons, and ephemera - all located in the former baggage room with its great rolling garage doors and original brick floors.

Maybe next time I'll take a train out there. I don't take enough trains in California.

A mildly acceptable compromise is being allowed to photograph the surroundings and happenings, but forbidden from publishing them.

Egads.

Such was the case at the Phillips Mansion, one of the last remaining landmarks of the forgotten town of Spadra (now part of Pomona).

Fortunately my forcibly private photos - which turned out amazing, frustrating me further - remind me enough of what I saw to be able to report it here.

Built in 1875 by wealthy rancher and developer Louis Phillips in the classic haunted mansion architectural style, of fired red bricks and with gas lighting, the mansion served not only as Phillips' private home until his death in 1900, but also as the Spadra post office while Phillips was postmaster. The Southern Pacific Railroad ran through part of the property. After changing hands several times, and falling victim to vandals, Phillips Mansion was saved by The Historical Society of Pomona, who intervened in 1966 to prevent demolition and industrial redevelopment. Unfortunately, the Whittier earthquake destroyed much of their restoration, and severely damaged the landmark in 1987. Original china crashed from shelves. Walls cracked. The roof leaked.

For years, all anybody could see was the exterior.

But since that time, tremendous restoration work has been done to the interior - particularly the ground floor - with some period-appropriate furnishings and wares replacing lost originals. Phillips' Weber piano and stool from his music room survived, but wallpaper has been stripped. Mirrors hang, reflecting natural light streaming in from frosted door windows. A fixture clings to a teetering ceiling panel, which has shifted enough to leave a gaping hole above.

The banister alongside the stairs leading up to the second floor shines like new lacquer, but the stairs themselves seem to sag in the middle, where feet once padded up and down a line of carpeting which has been peeled away, leaving the wood underneath lighter, exposed.

Upstairs, the sun streams through lace curtains, even on a cloudy, rainy day. It reflects off the paper peeling off the walls. It illuminates closets with overturned bathtubs, and streams into bedrooms with dropcloth-covered chairs.

And then there's the attic: the spookiest, shadowiest part of this mansion, whose hauntings may be real or imagined, or purely an architectural aesthetic. The walls and floors are lined with plywood, giving the beams and supports plenty of room to breathe. Lamps stand unplugged by these uppermost windows. Everything appears at a strange angle, as though the mansion were truly a funhouse. A ladder leads up to the widowmaker roof.

Everything creaks.

I guess I can't blame The Historical Society of Pomona Valley. They've worked hard to restore and protect it from vandals, scavengers, looters, etc. And like any other museum, they want to encourage visitors when the house is ready for its coming out party. I'm sure they don't want to promote the damaged condition it's still currently in.

But I love the beautiful ruin of a place like that, its upper floors drawing me to their wounds and scars. I'd rather count the layers of paint like rings on a tree, rather than see them covered up with a fresh coat, no matter how historically accurate the color is.

And I'm grateful to have gotten in at all. Apparently the mansion was opened up as a haunted house a few years ago, but public access has been incredibly restricted since.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Polaroid self-portrait circa 1990
I have a hard time calling you "Dear." I have a hard time calling you "sister."

It's been over seven years since we've seen each other. It's been at least three years, maybe four since we've spoken on the phone. I don't know, I've lost track.

It's been six months since I messaged you on your birthday. It's been two months since you didn't message me on my birthday.

At some point, you decided to break free from me. I don't know when. I didn't notice.

I'm glad you don't need me anymore.

We grew up 15 months apart, nearly the same size, wearing the same furry winter coats - so much so that we were always mistaken as twins. As much as you always wanted to be the older sister, you were always sensitive, naive, intimidated by and shrinking away from everything. You waited in vain for our parents to bestow privileges on you, but they were too busy manipulating us and pitting us against each other. They considered every permission a favor, every gift a loan. We owed them for our miserable lives, lives we never wanted despite Twinkies for breakfast and Barbie Doll Dreamhouses.

You always thought if you were a better daughter, our family wouldn't be falling apart.

You always thought if I could just be quiet, our mother wouldn't scream and cry all the time, threatening to drown herself in a warm bath.

I could not just be quiet.

I seized life, demanded freedom and lipstick and pantyhose and chorus and drama club, despite the emotionally bankrupting line of credit that I racked up with them.

Throughout our lives sequestered in that house together, I would wonder from day to day if I would be your best friend or your worst enemy. When I cried myself to sleep nearly every night, you told me to shut up because I was keeping you up. When you stayed at home the nights of your proms, I acted out the entire Grease soundtrack in our basement to entertain you.

When you went away to college, not necessarily upgrading roommates from me to a suicidal, evil-note-writing nutjob, I sent you cassette recordings of all of our stuffed animals, singing songs and performing skits to cheer you up and keep you company.

When I followed you the next year to the same college, you didn't want to introduce me to any of your friends because you were afraid they'd like me more. Some of them did like me more.

So there.

I needed you most when we were really young, when I was getting bare-bottom spanked with an unfinished wooden board in the basement, when I was exiled to the hot attic in the middle of summer as punishment for something I didn't do. You couldn't help me then. You could never help me.

And so as I grew up, I learned to not need you.

I haven't needed you for a long time.

I thought I'd expelled you from my life altogether six years ago when I refused to spend Christmas Day with our parents, to avoid seeing you. I'd decided my life was better without you. They were aghast and appalled but agreed to meet me for lunch the next day. That was the last time I saw them, and a month before the last time I spoke with them.

I had a nice break from you after that, letting the toxicity of our family seep out of my pores, learning to absorb the love bestowed upon me by another family who didn't seem to require blood ties in order to love me.

And then two years later you came crawling back to me. It wasn't the first time you'd begged for forgiveness. It wasn't the first time you protested too much. And I knew that eventually you'd crawl back to our parents, to those who've done nothing since we were born but poison the well, rendering us paranoid, discredited, phobic, suspicious, and worst yet, alone in this world.

They tried to convince us that the world was out to get us, when in truth, the world was waiting for us to be brave enough to enter it. They always protected us from everything except the one thing that was harming us most: them.

You always needed our family more than I did.

Then again, I eventually found family somewhere else. Someone's family always took me in: Nicki's, Chrissy's, Jon's, Michelle's, and through it all, Maria's. You never had that. You never found it.

Maybe you've found it now, and that's why you no longer need me. Good for you. You don't have to explain. You're doing what you have to do.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

I was hoping to book one of their sunset or nighttime runs, but when I called to make the appointment, they said, "Do you want to zip with the First Lady at 1 p.m.?"

"Uh, Michelle Obama?"

"Yeah. It's a public flight. She wants people to come."

"Uh, OK!"

And so I arrived at 12:30 - alone, of course - and waited. The staff excitedly asked us if we knew who we'd be flying with that day, and we all nodded - we'd all already been told.

We waited as 1 p.m. passed and they still hadn't arrived. We waited as they called to say they were on their way. We waited until they arrived, and we realized it was indeed a First Lady we'd be ziplining with, but not the First Lady of the United States: no, it was the First Lady of Nevada, Kathleen Sandoval.

photo courtesy Jena - Flightlinez Bootleg Canyon

Oh.

The zipline tour operator tried to recover gracefully as we all tried to figure out the mixup that resulted in them staffing up on extra security and photographers, and an extra long wait for all of us. We set off in our van along the rocky road up to Bootleg Canyon, eyeing the group, wondering...

...had the person taking the call assumed Michelle Obama, without mention of her name? Had they asked, and whoever called to make the appointment just went with it?

photo courtesy Jena - Flightlinez Bootleg Canyon

Once I was up there, all geared up, it didn't really matter what had brought me there, on that day, at that time. It was enough that I was back...

...and ready to fly.

The weather on my second visit was a vast improvement from the first, sparing me the rain and freezing wind.

The experience from my first time also spared me the fear I'd battled before.

I felt like a pro this time, and the runs passed quickly.

And next thing I knew, it was over.

I'd like to go back on a hot summer night, though that would require me being in Vegas on a hot summer day, which I wasn't able to work out this year (not even after my Joshua Tree retreat).

But that's OK, because I've already got my mind on planning next summer...

Saturday, November 24, 2012

One expects to find lots of ghost towns in the former gold- and silver-mining areas of California (namely, in the Eastern Sierras, like Bodie).

But Los Angeles County? What about its ghostly past?

I've posted extensively about Surfridge, the community that vanished from its oceanview bluffs next to LAX (which you can read about here, here and here), but there are other towns and villages that have vanished from our maps and the public consciousness, not too far from here.

Case in point: Spadra.

As part of the Rancho San Jose (a Mexican land grant given to LA families in the 1830s), Spadra was the first American settlement in the Pomona Valley, and became a thriving village in the 1860s. It was settled mostly by poor families who fleed the South - giving the townsite its nickname "Monkeytown," since the affluents nearby thought the tradesmen who settled Spadra were just a bunch of monkeys.

Spadra once had a bustling center with all varieties of small town businesses, and a surprising number of controversial deaths, including murders, suicides, and murder-suicides.

It definitely needed a cemetery.

In the 1870s, the Southern Pacific Railroad included a route from LA to Spadra, sparking interest in developing it. Shortly thereafter, however, the rail route was extended west all the way to Colton in the Inland Empire, therefore bypassing Spadra, sealing its fate as a ghost town. As a result, it was gobbled up by the growing town of Pomona. And although the cemetery of Spadra still exists, it's located across the train tracks, hidden under the 57 freeway.

Inextricably tied to the history of the Pomona Valley is prominent LA developer Louis Phillips, a wealthy rancher who owned a significant acreage of land in the former Rancho San Jose, and whose grave can be found at Spadra Cemetery. His famous mansion is just down the road (blog post forthcoming).

The railroad once ran through his Spadra ranch.

Phillips' headstone had been vandalized and toppled many years ago, but since has been righted. Not everyone buried at Spadra Cemetery has been so lucky.

There are the lost...

...unknown...

...unnamed...

...and forgotten.

There are the cracked...

...crumbling...

...soaked...

...and shattered.

Spadra Cemetery is notoriously difficult to get into, usually guarded by a locked wrought iron fence. It's even more difficult to find - if you are lucky to have ever even heard about it.

It must not host many visitors.

But those buried there - from whatever mysterious circumstances that brought them to their ultimate ends - probably don't notice. They've moved on, having reached the end of the trail...

...or have merely just gone home.

The Spadra Cemetery not only memorializes the residents of Spadra who have passed, but the village of Spadra itself, also deceased - disappeared from maps, dropped off the train line, businesses closed, forgotten by most.

I buckle belts for women who sell advertising at ClearChannel. I zip the dresses of women who plan events for Beverly Hills hotels. I yank down the hems of women who could hire me, and for women who once could be hired by me.

I call these women at their homes and on their cell phones to tell them about our Black Friday shopping event.

And I am damn good at it. So much so, that less than two weeks into my new job - which is supposed to be seasonal, which is supposed to be temporary - there is already talk of promotion.

I am remembering what it's like to excitedly go to work, stand around for five (or more) hours, and run around hoisting hangers full of cardigans and jeans and winter coats and dresses, rising tiptoe in my already lofty heels, feet swelling, arms straining to reach the highest sale racks.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

I am not of the frequent complainers. I am not on any customer service blacklist that I know of. If I'm ever of the vocal minority, it's to bestow praises on those that have served me well.

But tonight, on the eve of Thanksgiving, I'm not doing so well. I'm living off my retirement funds and just scraping by on those. I've taken a million steps back to a job at the mall just to fill in the gaps.

I don't have any family to spend Thanksgiving with, and my only invitation this year for Thanksgiving dinner is a standing pity invitation by a very sweet family who wants to make sure I have somewhere to go, if I have nowhere else to go.

Worse yet, my sister unfriended me on Facebook sometime in the last couple of months, though I just discovered it this morning.

And so instead of drowning my sorrows in Thanksgiving Eve imbibing - on the night bartenders call "Black Wednesday" - I decided to go see a rare film at the Silent Movie Theatre, hosted by the non-profit repertory The Cinefamily.

I came home from a midnight screening at 12:30 a.m. totally deflated, in tears, carrying a bag of popcorn spilling over in my arms, clutching a Diet Coke dripping with sweat, ridiculously large for this time of night.

I promptly sent the following letter to The Cinefamily to retell the events of my busted, wasted evening, which would have been better spent doing just about anything else:

Attention Management:

I have just returned home from waiting 45 minutes outside in the cold for a movie that was not going to be shown.

You knew it wasn't going to be shown and yet you did not tell me when I picked up my ticket at the box office. You didn't tell me while I stood outside freezing until after midnight for the midnight screening. You didn't even tell me when I spent $8+ on a large soda and small popcorn, or when I struggled with the butter dispenser.

When I took my seat in the theater, the announcement was not apologetic. Thanks for the offer of warm beer, but no thanks.

When I returned to the concession stand, your box office attendant asked me, "What, did you want a refund or something?" Uh, yeah.

I wasted my Thanksgiving Eve on you. Thanks for nothing.

I am appalled at your poor management and lack of customer service. I cannot believe the cavalier attitude and the lack of communication I encountered tonight. For a small, boutique, niche, NON-PROFIT business, you must value your patrons or you will perish.

I cannot comprehend how or why you think this is OK.

Thank you for the refund of the $8 ticket price, but what about the concessions I purchased and had to place between my legs as I drove home? What about the service charge for purchasing advance tickets online? [Note: the ticketing agent refunded that too, thankfully.]

What about the shivering? My sore feet? My wasted evening?

Please advise. I strongly urge you to make good.

Regretfully yours,Sandi Hemmerlein

The thing is, I only saw one other person walk out with me, refunded. No one else seemed to mind. All the people who seemed to know each other in line outside - some kind of insider community of film nerds and hipster geeks who ornament their septums with mustache-shaped piercings - then cheered at the alternate choices of films they were given instead of the scheduled screening, as though it was enough for them just to be there, regardless of what actually happened while they were there.

But I was there for the film, all alone, in my pajama bottoms, slippers, hoodie and glasses, wishing I were in bed instead, shivering in the cold.

And wasting my time (and money) on people who don't deserve it - to the sacrifice of doing something else which could have been so much more exciting, captivating, and gratifying, even if it was just sleep - ranks as an utter disaster in my book. Even in the smallest, most meaningless circumstances like a stupid movie I never heard of until earlier this week, at a little independent theater run by a bunch of self-important jerks whose lack of interpersonal skills will ensure their ultimate demise.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Sure, it was a good stopover point on the way to California for the gold rush, but like many desert towns, Las Vegas sprung up because of its proximity to natural springs.

The water made its way down in the form of snow melt from Mount Charleston, sunk into the ground and traveled downhill along an aquifer until it hit a fault line, which stopped the flow. Once enough pressure built up, the water traveled upwards, bursting through the surface, attracting plants, animals, and humans alike.

The Las Vegas Valley was once littered with the resulting spring mounds, though most of them have been bulldozed for commercial and residential development.

There exists a remaining historic spring mound at the sprawling Springs Preserve, which features acres of botanic gardens, hiking trails, museum exhibits, and historic structures...

...like a well...

...the old Spring House, now in ruins...

...the caretaker's house, also in ruins...

...and a chicken coop.

Plenty of life still thrives there...

...though Vegas has left its naturalistic past way far behind it.

But at the Springs Preserve, there is still a place to ramble in the wild...